As he prepared for a show in Scotland, I chatted to Ben Johnston, the drummer from Biffy Clyro in advance of their anticipated Australian tour later this month. We chatted about the tour, the Biffy Army, “The Captain”, the success, the shivers and the Cajón.
Good Afternoon Ben! Where abouts am I speaking to you?
Funnily enough I’m in a place called Perth in Scotland. There’s a day of pre-production before we start our tour of Britain, and our first date in fact is in Perth. So we’re just here, we just went through a bunch of songs, sound checks and all the rest of it, and then we start tomorrow!
You must be quite excited to get the tour started?
Absolutely. It’s always a joy to tour Britain. This is obviously where we’re from, and we get a good reception, huge shows. So yeah it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Most people down here seem to have gotten into you guys through a British friend – myself included. Would it be fair to say you have a fairly dedicated following at home?
Without a doubt. Our fans in the UK are absoultely incredible. We do call them the team Biffy, or the Biffy army, whose life purpose is to spread the word of the band, so we’re forever in their debt.
In some of the videos I’ve seen, it seems like they sing the songs louder than you do, too!
Yeah it can be a problem actually! It sounds like the Beatles or something. We have trouble to hear what we’re playing sometimes. But it’s a hard thing to complain about. It’s the best thing in the world when you’ve got a bunch of kids singing your songs back to you. So I’m definitely not going to moan.
Is that a trend that follows you around the world?
It is. It’s weird actually, I don’t know whether that’s because people see that on the internet – but even in Japan people were shouting louder than the band. And you obviously get a bunch of the British in Australia anyway who sing along. America, everywhere we go, people aren’t afraid to get involved and sing along. It’s kind of been the case for us almost from the start, a soon as we first released something, and people had it at home.
And speaking of touring the world, you’re about to return to Australia – is this your second or third time down here?
It’s our third tour. We’re so incredibly impressed with Australia, it’s possibly our favourite place to play in the world aside from our hometown.
So the last tour shaped up pretty well then?
It was awesome. The first tour as well. It was so surprising, because we played to close to a thousand kids in Sydney, and we’d never been there before. We’d never been somewhere where we’d had that many people without having to work really hard for it. In Britian and mainland Europe we tour relentlessly, to try and get people to come to our shows. So we were super stoked with that, and it seemed like you guys were really welcoming of us. Every since our first time there we’ve been asking our manager “When do we go back? When do we go back?”
When you tour a place like Australia, do you have much time to experience the country, or is the touring a bit too relentless?
Not usually. One of the reasons that we’re so busy is we’ve got press, promo and things like that. And also we’re a bit lazy, we like to sleep late and all that. In Australia though we do try to make extra effort to get out and about and see some things. I think especially because of the weather it makes it easier to get out of your bed and do things. So we’ll get to see a bit of Sydney, and also a day off in Melbourne. I have a friend staying there at the time. You always have British pals staying in Melbourne.
When you come from Scotland, it’s a very cool place to go. A lot of my friends are there, so yeah we’ve had lots of cool times there. We’ve done the whole tourist thing, been to the sea life place or whatever it’s called, seen the penguins! It’s just a joyous country to be in, I really love it.
Yeah I might live in Sydney, but I do love Melbourne. It’s our little taste of Europe!
Yeah I totally felt that, it does seem really cultured, and I guess there’s a really strong mix of people in Melbourne – which shows in their hospitality.
Moving away from touring, you released your most recent album late last year, Only Revolutions, and while you worked with Garth Richardson again on the album, you moved the recording studio from Vancouver to LA. How did the two compare as places to live and work?
They’re both really cool places to be honest. Vancouver very much like Melbourne funnily enough. The climate’s not that much different, but it did rain a hell of a lot in Vancouver towards the end of our recording. We were staying up in the mountains during rain season. It was hellish. It was possibly more depressing than Scotland.
And then the first time we went to LA, the sun was shining, and we were recording in Ocean Ways recording studios, where the Rat Pack recorded. The list is endless. We actually sang into the same microphone that Frank Sinatra used for My Way. It was such an inspiring place to be in – and as I said, with the sun shining, it made it easier to get out of the bed in the morning, and be inspired. So we’re definitely up for recording the next album in a sunny place again! Maybe every Australia!
Are there any talks of new material yet, or are you just focusing on the tour?
Once we finish one album cycle, once the albums out, and even before that, we’re already working on some new stuff. There’s always stuff that didn’t make that album – for whatever reason, maybe it didn’t fit in, that might make the next album. So I guess we already have, I don’t know, 8 or 9 ideas bubbling. But it’s too early to record and put them out, because out last album still has legs, and we have a lot of places to take it to who haven’t heard us play it yet. So we don’t want to rush anything.
Sure, you can’t put out too many albums, and we’re not scared of being a busy band, in the past we put out 3 albums in 3 years, it’s not something we’re aversed to doing. But now, with the amount of ground we have to go to on the tour, it’s just not reasonable to expect us to record anything until this time next year.
And the last album has done very well internationally, with the video for “The Captain” recently winning a NME award. Can you tell me a bit about the making of that video and what it was like winning the award?
Yeah, the making of the video – well we turned up to just this video studio, so you think, oh what’s going to happen? But we’d been told it was going to be this incredible set. So we walk in, and someone had literally built a pirate ship. It took them like 10 days, and you could touch it and it was real and it was just incredible. So we were all giddy for the first quarter of the day. But with any shoot you eventually get tired and bored because of all the waiting around.
I think we knew from the start that it was going to look incredible. And when we first watched it back we got chills! We were like, “is this a movie or a music video?” It seemed like the lines were blurred.
And I guess for that reason it drew a lot of attention, and we got the NME award. To be recognised by a magazine like that, who really didn’t give us much love at the start of our careers – possibly the opposite to be honest – was quite an accolate. And we were just really happy to get ourselves up on the stage and make an arse of ourselves. It was really fun.
As opposed to other days?
*laughs* Yeah exactly!
And you talk about the beginning of your career, and you guys have been together for almost 15 years!
Yep.
Obviously there’s the family element there, but what’s the secret to staying together, musically and creatively for this long, where so many other bands seem to fall apart?
I think one of the reasons we’ve been together so long is because we were all in this for the right reasons, and that’s the music. I know that seems like the obvious thing to say, maybe a bit of a cliché, but the amount of bands you meet who aren’t in it for the right reasons – they want the chicks, or they want to make money, or they want to be cool. All we’ve ever done is make music to please ourselves. We want to play something that went we listen back to it it gives us chills and shivers, and make us say we’d buy that record! It’s the only reason we’ve ever had, is to impress ourselves.
There are so many bands, again, who’ll second guess their audience. So early on they’ll have a big hit, and then they’ll try to make a song that sounds a bit like that one. We’ve never bowed to that sort of pressure, we’ve never let anyone else get involved. It’s just the three of us, in a tiny little room, and we write music that makes us feel happy. And I think if you stick to that then you can’t go wrong!
Yeah exactly. And then any success that comes from that is just a bonus, because you’re doing what you love.
Listen man, that’s exactly it. It’s just a bonus. If you try to tailor everything you do to get success, it’s never going to happen, and if it does happen, you’re going to be miserable.
And it’s funny how many bands don’t feel that way. Don’t care about your bloody haircut or your clothes, just make sure your music is good.
And our final question which I try to ask all the drummers I interview – what’s your favourite percussion instrument?
I’d have to say the Cajón (pictured below), it’s a little wooden box that has a lighter wooden front that you hit, and it has some snares inside. You actually sit on the box, and you hit down on it. I actually used it in Australia when we did a little backstage thing. It’s amazing. If you hit it right in the middle you can almost get a kick drum sound, if you slap it at the top you get a snare drum sound. Everybody I show it to – it’s just a box! And they can’t believe how it sounds.
Thanks again for talking to us Ben – best of luck with the tour and we’ll see you here in a few weeks!
Cheers, see you then!
Don’t miss Biffy Clyro when they tour Australia later this month. The tour was rescheduled from their postponed January tour, and tickets from the former shows remain valid for these ones. Here are the dates! Tickets are on sale now.
TUESDAY 18TH MAY 2010 , THE HI FI, BRISBANE
www.thehifi.com.au, www.ticketek.com.au
WEDNESDAY 19TH MAY 2010, THE HI FI , MELBOURNE
www.thehifi.com.au, www.ticketek.com.au
THURSDAY 20TH MAY 2010, METRO THEATRE, SYDNEY
www.metrotheatre.com.au www.ticketek.com.au
